AT&T Lumia 920 exclusive for six months and some training videos leak too

AT&T is gearing up to launch the Nokia Lumia 920 very soon—in fact we expect an announcement on pricing and availability sometime on Sunday.

Word is that AT&T reps are also in the midst of training with the device, becoming familiar with its main features and selling points. Part of that training is being done with these videos that demonstrate the highlights of the Lumia 920.

The videos came to us via one of our AT&T ninjas and we figured we would pass them on to you to take a gander. The first video focuses on the main features of the device, including specifications. The second video concentrates on the City Lens augmented reality app while the third takes a look at wireless charging and NFC pairing with an external JBL speaker.

The other tidbit we learned was that AT&T has a six-month exclusive on the Lumia 920—so any hope of another carrier getting it should be dashed. But as we’ve seen from Nokia, their strategy is to deliver specially configured devices for carrier partners. So while the Lumia 920 is exclusive to AT&T, the Nokia Lumia 9xx is not and should give hope to those on other carriers. Thanks to our source for the info...

So long Verizon if that's the case. I've made do with my Trophy (which I love btw), but if you're going to be like this, I have no problem returning to Ma Bell or Tmobile.
Your network is great and all, but your customer service has gone in the proverbial crapper and you're the most expensive to boot.
Lumia 920, here I come.

Good thing you are not an Android user then. Their super phones get one-uped every month and six months of superiority is a pipe-dream.

But honestly who gives a shit? (Obvious you do but I speaking in the general here) People should get the best phone they can afford and fits their use cases when they need a phone. I think haveing something to show off is a side-benefit not a deciding factor.

But that's generally true with all technology. In X months, there will something better. The finish line constantly moves back so I never see the point in waiting for a better version of a device. In 2 years (roughly) ATT users will upgrade to a next Gen device while people who waited for the 9XX have six months left on their old outdated device... Its a cycle...

I'm gonna get the red, but funnily enough it looks like orange in these videos, while this picture I took myself with the N8 without the flash (to have as natural colors as possible) it actually looks red: http://i.imgur.com/G0zOx.jpg

I don't understand why a sales rep would even waste time trying to sell you or anyone an Android/iPhone/Blackberry when you specifically ask for a Windows Phone - it's the easiest sale they could make!

I said it before and I will say it again, when I go in and ask for a Lumia 920, and if they even breathe a word about a different device, I am walking out of the store and placing my order on line. If their employee performance is gauged by number of activations, then it's their own fault for not giving me the device I asked for.

Does anyone know how upgrades work on business accounts? I bought my Lumia900 through work (they pay my contract) 6 months ago. Does upgrading before the 2 years cycle cost the same as on personal accounts before the 2 year cycle?

AAAhhhhhh. I'm on VZW. I hope they get a variant of this phone. This is KILLING me! (Ok. Maybe not.) Not a happy camper right now though. I wish VZW would say something already. So I know whether I'm waiting for the 9xx or getting an 8X or ATIV-S.

I will likely wait until the end of November (Black Friday or so) and if nothing is announced, I may just move my work phone account to AT&T for the 920. I'm tired of being at the mercy of the carrier for devices I want.

If they don't get a variant of the 9xx I will be foreced to go with the 8x and Nokia will have lost a sale. I just cannot see waiting 6 months for a phone that will have something newer come out just a few months later. It is a never ending cycle, i know this, but at least if I got the 9xx now I would have enjoyed the first 6-9 months knowing i had the top of the line phone for that period.

Yeah this isnt amazing for my ive been holding on to my upgrade since the end of august with an iphone 3gs i want to throw it through a window i dont care if this is only exclusive to at&t for 6 months because as someone said in 6 months im sure a phone im more interested in will be out anyway so i think ill just go for the 8x or ativ the 8x is alright but no spec sheet says it can be used as a wifi hotspot or has wifi direct if it doesnt have those two things samsung ativ it is

Right... so us Verizon customers might as well wait until the fall 2013 for the next wave of Lumias. Let's hope that by then WP8 has made a significant impact on the market that would prompt Verizon to get the exclusive before AT&T.

I disagree! The wpcentral staff continues to give time to rumors about other carriers getting a 9xx near the wp8 release. They mentioned it specifically in this article. Seems to me like they may know more than they can let on...

Or I could be wrong. Truth is, all the wp8 handsets coming out in Nov have very similar specs, and what's really important is the OS.

Now let's get some real damn info outta big red so a HUGE number of phone consumers can start planning & getting as excited as we are for wp8!

More likely 940 ( or something ) will be announced at MWC, and Nokia will have it exclusive too. If Verizon still doesn't offer a good subsidy, or promotion for it, then it will, once again, be AT&T exclusive.

This vids make me excited and frustrated. Excited that the 920 will be my next smartphone and frustrated that my upgrade isn't until December. It's good see that this phone will eventually make it to other carriers, and by the time it does it will be at a discounted price where there is plenty of opportunity to bring people into the fold.

Without intending to troll, you're already behind the curve. How anyone gets by without simultaneous voice and data is beyond me. I guess that should change with voLTE but that likely means waiting for a whole new round of phones :)

Thank you so much!!!! Thank you! Thank you thank you! Finally a freaking light at the end of the damn tunnel! If something better will be out I dont care I'll take the Lumia 920 in a heartbeat! Chances are the new generation Lumia will be exclusive to at&t again for a limited time, and I dont want to wait any longer.

Did anyone actually watch the videos? While showing features, the narrator has on idea how the OS even works. "Tap city lens on the home screen, then press start"? Why would MS/Nokia even consider letting AT&T make their own videos. The other highlight was in video 2. Showing bluetooth pairing and stating you use bluetooth to do NFC. Sadness.

I don't know if anyone caught this but in the second video when they hand swipes to show all of the aps on the phone they show "AT&T U-Verse Live TV" Does this mean that if I have U-Verse TV at home I'll be able to watch live TV on the go?

This is a different name from the current mobile app that on the Windows 7 handsets out now.

This has been on the cards for a while now, why cant people just accept it and go with what's available on their carrier? Who knows in 6 months what will be the hottest WP device, just enjoy what you can get.

There aren't the words to describe the idiocy in this video. "Based on Windows PC 8" and the graphic for IPS meaning "inter-player scaling" are just two examples. No wonder why sales agents are such morons. I mean, seriously, "inter-player scaling" isn't even a real thing!

I'm not assuming that. It's done. 6 months if even at all. I'm not so sure Verizon would even want to go through the trouble and work to start selling a 6 month old phone. They will just wait for something else. They aren't going to pay any money for it either so when the next best thing from Nokia comes, it will be exclusinve to AT&T as well. Why would AT&T completely subsidize the 920 only to let Verizon have a 922, or what ever they are going to call it, before the 6 months are up? Waste of money. Exclusive means exclusive. Any 9xx variant is still a 920. Just because you change the name and give it a few exclusive apps doesn't make it different enough.

So now we know as has been thought here before that the 920 will only be on ATT. The last time ATT had the L900 it only sold 300000. With this I doubt they will sell over 100000. Meanwhile all those 820 vairants are going to be sloppy seconds from Nokia. As bad as the sales for the 920 will be all those 820's will just languish on those carrire inventories. Meanwhile Nokia will be on even more life support in 6 months. Guess they never saw what happened to Palm and Sprint with that Pre exclusive?
I have learned never again to jump to a carrier just for a phone. When you do the math, yes you save up front but pay through your arse over the lock in. No thanks.

No way! The screen resolution is a huge deal. It's significant. The differences in the camera are monstrous as well. This was Nokia's primary feature. Their killer app if you may. And the 820 doesn't have it. No image stabiliazation, no BSI sensor = poor low light performance. 8GB storage vs 32GB. Now I have to buy an SD card for it? bleh. Less uptime due to it's smaller battery. God I'm SO TIRED of phones not lasting through the day while actually using it. a 1650 mah battery? Seriously??? This thing is rated with the same talk time as my Galaxy nexus. It's so bad I had to buy the bigger 2100 mah battery and it still doesn't last long enough. So NO. Also, it's just not very pretty compared to the 920. I've seen the verizon 822 version and it's disgusting. It's a budget phone at best on par with last years models.

No. The camera is the primary draw for me, and the screen is second. I could deal with buying a micro SD card to bring up the storage, but it is still a drawback. But seriously, the OIS and the BSI in the camera are the main things I want. The high res screen are next. If I can't have those two things, I'm just going to stick with my Trophy as there's no point in upgrading to something that isn't going to be what I REALLY want, knowing that it is out there, just beyond my grasp, and with my luck, just as soon as I sign a contract, it'll be the available the next month.
No, if I can't have those two features, I'm going to hang on to my Trophy, and in May, when my contract with Verizon is up, I'll see what is happening on the no contract front. I'm not going to sign another contract with any carrier unless it's for what I want on Verizon with their coverage. I'm not going to go with a contract on ATT for a phone with LTE knowing that their LTE coverage is so pathetic and I'd have to drive an hour to get to the closest place to use it, when I could use it on Verizon in my living room. No.
As for exclusivity, I'll be patient - for a LITTLE while. If there isn't a variant on Verizon that has those two features - the camera with OIS/BSI and the 920's resolution, well, then as a stockholder who wants a Nokia device, I'll go back to my initial gut reaction upon hearing about ATT exclusivity, of demanding Stephen Elop's resignation, but this time it will not be a rash gut reaction that I go back on within 8 hours, after calming down and thinking about it, it will be after spending well over a month waiting and watching to see if there is a variant coming to Verizon. As a stockholder, it is a Nokia that I want, because I want to support the company that I am a part owner of, because I want to own a device made by the company that I believed in enough to invest in. And if Stephen Elop is going to allow that company to make an exclusivity agreement that is going to block me from owning one of the phones that I invested in, then I want him to move out of that corner office. But this time, instead of calling for his head immediately, I'll give him until the first week of December. Then, if I can't buy a phone, I will call for it. I think that is fair.

The Lumia 900 came out six months ago. It's now considered outdated by most. The Lumia 800 came out some 5 months before that. So does everyone honestly expect Nokia to not have an even newer device come 6 months after the release of the 920?

Face it, the 92X on Verizon is virtually mythological at this point. We can only hope that in 6 months Verizon will have whatever new phone that Nokia announces and it is a substantial improvement on the already impressive 920. Horrible time to release a new flagship device compared to the holiday season, but this is Verizon and Nokia we're talking about here. They've proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that they're not capable of doing WP justice together ...

2 Questions:
1. It looks like NFC transfers may not be instant, as say, the Galaxy S3 commercials suggest. This is understandable for things like video, but I for one always thought of the "tap to pay" usage and equated transfers as being pretty quick. Has anyone used this tech to give an approximation of transfer time for given file sizes?

2. Not having a previous Windows phones, are the 920 colors the same as the 900? I envision a pain in the ass on launch trying to see the colors next to each other and would like to get a comparison/expection fulfillment out of the way.

Personally the physical appearance of the 920 is my biggest turnoff, I didn't like the 900 compared to the iphone or One X. I really don't like the live tile appearance either, it appears dated compared to what could be possible with these screens and tech.
Still the tech of this phone looks interesting and I really want to like it. I don't like Android, I'm tired of iOS, and the camera would be important for me. Plus (I'm looking at you iphone 5) I have man hands, weak eyes and can handle a screen with readable/usable real estate. I literally get a cramped thumb on the iphone 4/4s.

Everyone's main arguing point in this article is about two year contract signers always being behind. What carrier actually has two year upgrade plans anymore. With ATT I can upgrade my phone and sign a new "2 year " agreement every 20 months, not 24.

Is this sarcastic? I mean, 20 months vs 24 months? You're still basically locked in and left behind. 4 months shorter isn't significant. Anyway, I go where the hardware I want is. I don't do contracts. I buy the phone I want and go there. Currently on Verizon, I'll be hopping to AT&T. Living in a major metropolitan area puts me in an ideal situation. I get 4g with everyone so i don't care much about coverage. It's funny, the Tmobile HSPA+ they call 4g is actually faster than my current 4g on Verizon at my house. So I can even go there if they had hardware that was remotely interesting.

ATT exclusive for 6 months, wtf? Glad I don't live in USA for this.
Unless they release some sort of 9xx exclusive for the other carriers I have a hard time believing that this marketing strategy will pay out for Nokia.

Yeah I mentioned it up there in a reply. The camera is a huge diference. No Image stabilization and no BSI sensor so it's not going to have the low light performance that Nokia was touting so proudly. It was THE major point of their entire anouncement that day. The Camera is their "killer app" and the 820 isn't gonna have it! It's just another budget phone.

Is anyone else concerned about the size of this phone? We just got GS3s for our work phone, and I already have a GS2 as my personal. After using the GS3 my GS2 seems like a heffer! This phone is thicker and heavier than my GS2!!! I am really excited about it, but am timid about it's "girth." Just me?

Is anyone at Nokia counting how many onesey and twosey customers that this 6 month deal is costing? If I wait 6 months I may as well wait two more for the newest and greatest! Most people won't wait, they will settle for choice # 2. And you ( Nokia) will lose. Hellooooo Nokia is there anyone out there?